


I left you with both of the rings

by swishandflick



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers "The Snap" AU, Drinking, Established Relationship, M/M, No Character Death, References to Depression, Sci-Fi, Smut, Texting, intense depictments of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 14:52:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23112175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swishandflick/pseuds/swishandflick
Summary: At 10:24 am on Saturday, everything changed. And Jon Favreau's world shattered.With a snap, half of the universe disappeared.  Jon Lovett is one of them.
Relationships: Hanna Koch Vietor/Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett, minor Priyanka Aribindi/Tanya Somanader
Comments: 17
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The Good Side" by Troye Sivan.
> 
> This is purely fictional but you'll realize I borrowed the concept of the snap from Avengers Infinity War. The Avengers are only mentioned here and will not be a part of the story. This is a three-parter. Please keep this secret and safe, and heed the tags! I assure you that while things look bleak now, there is a happy ending. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

“Welcome to Pod Save America, I am Tommy Vietor.”

“And I am Dan Pfeiffer.”

“Some personal news first. As you may already know, Lovett is one of the people who disappeared last Saturday. We..we urge anyone with information about this to please let us know, and also the relevant authorities, please. We understand that law enforcement and scientists all over the world are trying to understand what happened, so anyone who knows anything about this should try to cooperate with them. We also ask everyone to respect Jon Favreau’s privacy at this time. For those of you who’ve had a loved one disappear, from the bottom of my heart, I want to say I am sorry, and I know how you feel, and I hope we get answers..and that we get our people back, and-

“Tommy.” Dan’s voice says softly, face moved away from the microphone.

“Can we cut?”

Tommy lurches from the chair and runs blindly in the direction of the restrooms, his eyes burning. He slams the door shut and collapses against the counter, nearly knocking the soap dispenser to the ground. _Breathe in, slow. Hold, one, two, three. There you go, Tommy. Now exhale, slow, slow!_ Hanna’s voice in his head helps, and he idly wonders if he should call her and assure her she’s okay. Find out if _she’s_ okay. She does so much for him, but Tommy takes, Tommy only takes, Lovett’s her friend too-

_Breathe, Tommy._

He thumbs through his phone to Lovett’s contact and dials it instead. 

The call doesn’t connect, just like it hadn’t twelve minutes ago when he’d tried, desperately, before they started recording. Just like the hundred other times he’s dialed since Saturday. 

Just like 11:12 am on Saturday, when Tommy had called Lovett, half convinced Jon had smoked up too much last night and was screaming into his ear, _“Tommy, is Lovett there? Where’s Lovett? I can’t find-his phone is unreachable-”_

Tommy draws in another deep, shaky breath as he stares at the smiling face of Lovett set as his contact picture. He looks small and a bit disgruntled, hair curling wildly as he holds Leo in his arms.

“Tommy?” a voice that sounds like Elijah floats through the door. “Should we-”

“Be out in a second,” he calls out, quickly turning the faucet on and splashing water on his face. 

“Tommy!”

“I said I’ll be out-”

“Tommy, the FBI director, on TV!”

Tommy throws the door open and rushes out to where Dan and Elijah are standing by the television screen, eyes glued to it, surrounded by a small group of people. Even as he tunes his mind in to listen to the voice of Mike Casper, he mentally catalogues how many people the group was missing.

Priyanka. Michael. Brian. Sarah. Oh god, Tommy’s going to have to find someone to take over the newsletter, he’s got to ask-

Dan’s firm hand at his shoulder brings him back to earth, and back to the television.

“-confirmation that this is a global incident, and we can also confirm to be true our early estimates that indicated roughly half of the world population has disappeared without trace. While we are investigating this further, we have a statement from the Avengers stating that they believe this to be the work of Thanos.”

Several gasps are heard throughout the studio, but Tommy stares at the screen, frozen.

“We want to assure the American people that we are committed to bringing those missing home, and that the Avengers have assured us that they will fully cooperate with the FBI and the United Nations in any and all strategies to bring them back. We implore all of you to remain careful as this is an ongoing threat, and to call us at the number flashing on your screens now if you have any information about this-”

Tommy hears Tanya drop into a chair behind him. He turns around to do something, put an arm around her, anything, but watches as Travis beats him to it.

“They’re working on it. See? They know it’s that purple motherfucker, they’ll do something, the Avengers will, and we’ll get her back, and everyone else too, yeah?”

Tommy slinks back into the studio.

Dan walks in a second later. “Hey,” he says. His face is weary; he looks like he’s aged twelve years since Friday. “We need to record, Tommy. Let’s try again. We need to get out all these resources to people so they know where to call and where to reach for help-”

“I know,” Tommy says tightly. His head is pounding. “Brittany emailed us the food bank and volunteer lists, can you get that? We should tweet it out too.”  
“Yeah. Should we do that before or after we talk about the half-empty Senate and House and the missing Vice President?”

Tommy stares at him. He gets the wildest urge to laugh.

_What the fuck is wrong with you?_ He then wonders if Lovett would laugh, if he was here. He wonders if Jon would laugh ever again. He wonders how he is, he should drop by after they record.

He wonders for the billionth time how Lovett is. Or where. Or if he is even-

_No,_ he thinks viciously, snapping himself out of the scariest depths of his brain. 

“Let’s start,” he says curtly, dropping into his chair. His head keeps pounding.

xxx

Jon twirls the ring between his fingers. He doesn’t put it on. 

xxx

_January 5, 2018_

“Ow, fuck, Lovett, baby,-”

“Sorry, sorry! I am taking it off, I am taking it off!” Lovett gasps, wrenching the ring off of his finger and dropping it on the nightstand. “I can’t believe you almost swallowed my-”

“Don’t say it.”

“Okay, but we need to go get this fucking thing resized. I am not telling the doctors how a gold ring ended up in your intestines-”

Jon lets out a pitiful laugh. He’s going to die of blue balls, that’s it, that’s how he’s going to go.

“-your oral fixation is out of this world though, Favreau, jesus!”

Jon lets out a moan as Lovett kisses his way down his body again, licking around his nipples. 

“Your-your fingers-”

“Jesus christ”, Lovett mutters shakily, but thumbs Jon’s lips open, who obediently takes it into his mouth.

“I love you,” Lovett whispers, “Look at you taking my fingers in, do you want my cock next, baby?”

Jon whimpers nonsensically around the finger. He knows Lovett got the message.

“I love you too,” Jon gasps as Lovett closes his mouth around his cock seconds later. “So much, I love you so much.” 

xxx

Leo whines at the foot of his bed, staring at Jon beseechingly. Pundit joins in as soon as she hears her brother, as if she’d been waiting all this while to make a noise.

“I’ll take you guys out in a second,” he murmurs, his voice gruff from disuse. He wonders if he can, though, if he can do anything that doesn’t involve staring at the blank ceiling and thumbing through his phone.

Lovett’s phone is still dead.

“When Tommy comes to see us this evening, you guys should go with him,” Jon says out loud, sitting up. He can already hear Tommy say, “Jon, you need the company, and if you won’t let us stay with you then you should-” 

Pundit yips and jumps on to the bed to climb up to him, licking his face. He hugs her tight, and feels a fresh batch of tears roll down his face and into her fur.

“Where is dad, Pundit?” he whispers, and he has never been more desperate for an answer that she cannot give. Pundit whines again, and then starts in his arms, ears perking up. A second later, the doorbell rings.

“Tommy’s early, kids,” Jon says as he hears the key turn in the lock.

“Jon!” Tommy’s voice rings down the hallway, and even through the space separating the bedroom from the living room, Jon can hear the urgency in his voice. His heart pounds. He quickly leaps off of the bed after dislodging Pundit on to the mattress, pocketing Lovett’s ring.

xxx

_January 5, 2018_

“I threw my ring somewhere last night, can you find it while I run the dogs out?” Lovett presses a kiss to Jon’s mouth as he jumps off of the kitchen stool. 

“You left it on the nightstand, it’ll be there.” Jon circles Lovett’s waist with his arm and pulls him up against his body. Lovett comes, soft and warm and compact. He smells like coconut and vanilla, a subtle mixture of himself and Jon. “Wear a sweatshirt, it’s chilly. And can you pick up the hot dogs for the afternoon?”

“I do all the work in this household,” Lovett complains. “I cook-”

“Okay, just because you made that pie once, two years ago-”  
“I clean, I walk the dogs-”

“I remember your old apartment and the only reason this house is clean is because I started the cleaning sundays tradition-”

“Speaking of, can we clean today if we get to have sex later? I think we should clean on Saturdays too. And Fridays. Maybe that’s overkill?” Lovett looks up at Jon innocently from between his eyelashes. Jon wants to fuck him through the kitchen floor, fold him in his arms after, and kiss him until they’re ready to go again.

“You already want it? I thought I wore you out last night,” Jon sucks a biting kiss on Lovett's pale neck, right below his ear, making him shriek and laugh. It’ll never be covered by anything Lovett wears. _Good,_ Jon thinks.

“Let me take the kids out and get the hot dogs and I’ll show you,” Lovett steps back from Jon’s arms. “Oh, can you also call Hanna and tell her we don’t have a bowl big enough for the dip so she’ll have to bring one?”

“I do all the work in this household,” Jon mimics, laughing as Lovett flicks him off and walks out of the room. Jon hears him calling to Leo and Pundit as the front door opens, and then closes a minute later. He frowns as he spots the worn Williams hoodie hanging on the back of the sofa. He pulls out his phone and sends a quick text as he walks to their bedroom, idly wondering if he should start some laundry.

9:48a  
Jon: I told you to wear a sweatshirt

9:50a  
Lovett: The cold can’t defeat me

xxx

“Jon! Did you watch the press conference?” Tommy’s voice brings him crashing back to the present, to his cold bedroom. The air smells stale, and the ring in his pocket feels like it’s burning a hole through the cloth into his skin.

“What?” Jon looks properly at Tommy for the first time since he walked in, and he looks all the worse for wear, his hair disheveled like he’s been running his fingers through them constantly. His eyes are framed with red and there are dark circles underneath that Jon hasn’t seen since the White House days.

Jon wonders how terrible he looks.

Tommy looks at him wordlessly for a second as if assessing how much to tell Jon.

“Tommy, what? What happened?” Jon grabs the remote from the television console in their bedroom and turns the TV on.

“Mike Casper, he gave a press conference-”

Fox News cuts off Tommy’s voice.

“So honestly, they told us that Thanos is responsible for all these mysterious disappearances, and that those good-for-nothing Avengers who got us into this mess in the first place are hatching a plan. I hope they also know they killed all these people-”

Jon’s not aware of the sounds in the room anymore, he feels like he’s being rapidly whizzed away from the room, the ground dropping out from underneath his feet. The remote clatters to the floor before he does, and Tommy’s voice yelling out his name is the last thing he hears.

xxxxx


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here's chapter two! I apologize for the extremely long wait-but hopefully this update's worth it?
> 
> Chapter/Fic warnings as mentioned in the tags: Intense depictions of grief, depression, character presumed to be dead. 
> 
> I promise the happy ending isn't far off now!
> 
> Please keep this secret and safe!

“This is great,” Sean says, gesturing at the tiramisu he’s having. “You want some?”

“I am good.” Jon smiles tightly, wondering how long he needs to stay before he can make his excuses. He knows Tommy gets that look on his face whenever Jon ducks out too early from things, so he resigns himself to stay for at least one whole hour. It was their holiday party, after all.

The first one without Lovett, his mind supplies, like it always does. Jon rubs his hand across his head where it’s starting to throb. 

Tommy shows up over his shoulder.

“Ira wants to do a group photo.” Tommy looks tired, his santa hat perched jauntily on top of his head. Jon hesitates. That picture isn’t going to have so many people in it. 

He smiles and nods, stepping alongside Tommy to walk to the group already gathering in the corner by the tree. Tanya’s by the side, and the expression on her face is so heartbreakingly familiar to the one Jon stares at when he looks in the mirror every morning.

“Doing alright, Somanader?” Tanya glances up at him, her face immediately rearranging to a friendly expression. 

“Alright, just wondering if we ordered enough Jura,” she says sarcastically. Jon snorts. 

“I volunteer to take any bottles we have left.” Elijah gestures to them to get in formation, and he slips an arm around Tanya, facing the camera.

“Are you doing okay?” she asks him quietly. She’s looking at him with so much tenderness, like she’s realized that she need not put up a front for Jon. He wishes he could tell her how thankful he is for that.

He shrugs. “Are you?”

Tanya smiles bitterly. “I keep remembering how much she loved Jura.”

“Yeah,” Jon says, his throat closing up a bit. “So did Lovett. I remember that time he and Priyanka fought for that last bottle, when we did the tasting.”

Tanya slips an arm around his waist and squeezes. Jon feels himself calming down slightly. It helps, knowing that someone feels what he’s feeling. He slips a smile on to his face just as the camera clicks, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Tanya doing the same.

xxx

“You looked good up there,” Sean shakes his hand as Jon steps off stage. He wipes the sweat from his brow, remembering with a pang how sweaty Lovett would get under the stage lights, and how Jon would stare at him longingly, waiting to get his mouth on him, even if Lovett squirmed in his arms, laughing, accusing Jon of having a kink for sweaty sex.

“Thanks,” Jon smiles. “A bit chaotic, but the news cycle is crazy these days, so we go through everything we can.”

“It’s been crazy for a while now, especially with the Avengers gone quiet.” Sean falls into step next to him as they walk backstage. Jon’s trying hard to remember who he actually is. Akilah’s friend? No, was it Tanya’s?

“Sorry, Akilah mentioned your partner was..dusted?” 

Akilah then.

“Yeah,” Jon says. It doesn’t cause him to want to rip his heart out of his chest these days to acknowledge it, make him want to stop existing, but his head hurts in a way that’s never really stopped since the day Lovett left.

“I am..sorry.” Sean’s looking awkward now, and Jon wants to keep walking more than anything. Find Tommy and Dan, tell them he’s leaving. 

“Thanks. I’m going to go say bye to people.” Jon’s about to turn away when Sean clears his throat.

“I am sorry if this is..too forward, and maybe this isn’t appropriate given what we were just talking about, but would you like to..get a drink sometime?”

Jon stares at him. Sean looks awkward, like he’s second guessing himself, and Jon wants nothing more than to disappear, go home, leave.

“I..I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m ready for that.” It’s the answer he’s been giving everyone. _I’m not ready. No Alyssa, I don’t think I can meet your cousin just yet. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’m not over my fiancé yet, my fiancé who got dusted and I didn’t even have a body to bury. I didn’t get to say goodbye. And now I have all these video games in my house that I play because they’re all I have left of him. _

Sean nods at him, and Jon can sympathize with his shuffling feet and his body angling towards the exit. “Hey, I understand. I’ll..see you around then. Good show, keep up the good work.” He waves, leaving Jon standing there.

xxx

_January 7, 2018_

“Jon.”

Hanna’s voice comes softly through the darkness of the room, and Jon automatically closes his eyes, wondering if he should pretend to be asleep.

“Honey, you have to eat something. Tommy made soup, you want me to bring you some up here?” Jon feels the bed dip, and a moment later, feels a warm, tiny hand on his shoulder. He opens his eyes.

“I can come down there,” he says, blinking up at Hanna, his voice gruff. He clears his throat. “Any news?”

Hanna’s silence answers him before she does.

“No. No, but they’re looking. Many of the Avengers are. They say they can do something.”

Jon wants to ask when, he wants to ask how, and how long. 

He wants to disappear.

“Can we do something?” Jon asks instead. “Did they-do they need help with anything? We can publicize.”

“Tommy’s finding out,” Hanna replies. “He’s on the phone with Tony Stark's PR.”

“We should do an emergency pod.” Jon tries to sit up, but Hanna’s hand on his chest lands with enough force that he collapses back onto his pillows. 

“You need to eat, and then get some more rest before you go talking to the public, okay? Tommy’s heading back to the office after this, they’ll take care of things for a couple of days. I need you to stay here and try to-try to feel better, okay?”

“I can’t just stay here and do nothing, Hanna, Lovett is-” Jon’s sentence hangs in the air, unfinished, because he doesn’t _know_ what happened to Lovett, no one does, because it’s happened to half the fucking world, and Jon doesn’t have the words to begin processing something like that.

If Lovett was here, he would rant and gape at the television, for sure, but he would be the one who gathered them close, put together a game plan. He’d be the one Jon would turn to for comfort and for reason, and now he’s gone. 

“Hey,” Hanna murmurs, and then she’s moving up the bed and resting her head on Jon’s pillow, and pulls at him until he goes. Jon buries his face in the crook of Hanna’s neck, his arms tight around her. Her presence is as warm and comforting as anything he’s felt, and he lets the tears come.

xxx

Dan texts him a “Hope you’re doing okay” and omits the Merry Christmas. Jon’s grateful for that.

And even if it might make him a terrible person, Jon’s relieved he skipped out on Christmas with the family this year. It had been hard enough being at home for Thanksgiving; even though his parents tried to give him his space and didn’t ask him too many questions, the empty chair next to Jon’s at the table had taunted him the whole trip. 

It had been almost as bad as visiting the Lovett’s earlier in the year.

Jon snaps out of the memory. He had to make decisions to stop consciously recollecting the painful things, according to his therapist. Jon’s not very sure on how exactly he is supposed to achieve that when he still wakes up to an empty space in his bed every day.

Lucca is play-fighting with Leo, and Pundit is supremely unbothered by all of this, snoozing comfortably on a chair. Hanna’s snapping pictures of the dogs, her red dress swishing around her knees as she moves.

Molly comes up to sit next to him then, her hand slipping into Jon’s as she settles on the couch, glass of wine in hand. Andy emerges from the kitchen too, and hands Jon his own glass of wine, sitting down on his other side.

Jon sits like that for a while, Andy breathing next to him, Molly’s hand in his, sipping his wine and smiling at the dogs. Jon wishes he had the words to tell them how glad he is, how much it means to him that they stayed here with him for Christmas, all of them, because they didn’t want him to be alone.

Like she can sense his eyes on her, Pundit jumps off the chair and comes trotting over to Jon, who immediately extricates his hand to lift her up onto his lap, and then buries his face in her fur.

She’d been more clingy the past year than she’s ever been, and Jon’s woken up more days than not with her draped across the foot of the bed, over his legs. Jon’s not sure if she _knows_, but she is probably the one being who misses Lovett as much as Jon does.

His hand itches to reach for his phone, thumb through to Lovett’s contact. He refrains, because he knows how Tommy feels about it.

Like he’d been summoned, Tommy walks into the den and calls out to Jon.

“Jon, help me with the table, man?”

Jon jumps up, Pundit in his arms, and hands her off to Andy. 

Tommy’s wearing the reindeer hat Lovett always used to make fun of. _”Does Hanna kiss you with those antlers, Vietor?”_

“Here, forks and knives,” Tommy hands him a bunch of them.

Jon eyes the place settings. “You really need help to set up five spots?” 

Tommy eyes him as if to say, “Don’t be stupid.” Jon can’t pretend that he didn’t know this was coming.

“Okay, you know I’m going to ask you this, but I’m still going to ask you this. Are you okay?”

When it had first happened, everyone was asking Jon if he was okay. Everyone was asking everyone else if _they_ were okay, because it was a collective calamity they were all now living in, just because of the snap of a finger. No one knew the answer then, and nearly a year later, Jon’s not sure he knows the answer now, or that he ever will.

Jon just shrugs. Tommy shakes his head, but drops his voice.

“Hey, I am sorry, that was a shitty question. I just- if it gets too much, if you need to go or something, it’s cool, you know that, right?” Tommy says, trying and failing to fold the napkins into any discernable shape.

Jon smiles. “I know that Tommy, but I’m fine, really.” He finishes setting the silverware, and then picks up a napkin.

Tommy eyes him. “Is it weird if I tell you how much I miss him?” He immediately glances down and begins fidgeting with the napkin.

Jon’s heart does that thing it does whenever anyone even obliquely references Lovett. And then suddenly, like it’s the first time Jon’s seeing him in nearly a year, Jon registers how small Tommy actually looks now, his ridiculous hat perched over his head, shoulders hunched. 

Jon can’t recall one moment in the past year when Tommy had seemed to walk like he used to. Before. 

They’d all changed, but Jon hadn’t noticed how _much_ everyone else has, apart from him.

“Tommy, of course. I-I’m sorry if you felt like you couldn’t tell me, before.” It takes him a second to notice that his eyes are filling up again. He stares at the napkin in his hand, and then wipes his eyes with it.

Tommy huffs out a laugh, and then Jon feels himself being pulled into Tommy’s arms.

“I miss him too,” Jon murmurs into Tommy’s shoulder. “Every day Tommy, I-I know you don’t want me to text his number, but I text him _every day_. I ask him to come back.”

Tommy grips him tighter, and Jon feels his shoulder shaking.

Jon hugs him back tighter.

“Let’s text him together?” Tommy asks, his voice rough, like he hadn’t been talking for a while. “Once more?”

“Yeah,” Jon murmurs, and they let go of each other. Jon turns away to let Tommy wipe his eyes, and pulls out his phone. It’s already open to his text thread with Lovett, though it’s been a decidedly one-sided conversation for a while.

The last text from Jon was sent last night.

_ Jon: Just gave Pundit and Leo a bath. Pundit’s almost used to being bathed by me now  
_

Tommy comes up behind him and leans over his shoulder.

Tommy doesn’t say anything about how Jon needs to listen to his therapist, maybe wean off of his texts with Lovett and obsessively checking his phone every other minute. He thinks that even if Tommy does mention it, maybe Jon won’t have his usual angry response to it now, not after recognizing Tommy’s slumped shoulders and tired eyes in himself. Tommy has been worried about Jon, and Jon wants to start trying harder to make him not be.

Jon types out a text, and then passes the phone to Tommy. When he’s done, Tommy presses send, and they stand shoulder to shoulder, waiting for a reply that doesn’t come.

xxx

Jon’s not sure what makes him reply with a “Sure,” when Akilah texts him the next day, asking if she could give his number to Sean.

He’s also unclear why exactly he said yes when Sean texts that he’ll be back in town on the 3rd, and asks Jon again if he wants to meet up for a casual drink, no pressure. 

Jon’s not sure how he feels about it, or why he even said yes. But maybe Tommy would be happy, and not be worried that Jon was wasting away in his new apartment with the blank walls.

Tommy smiles slightly when Jon tells him, and asks him if he’s sure, and Jon shrugs. Tommy stares at him then and says that he’s happy if Jon’s happy.

Jon shrugs again.

xxx

_December 27, 2017_

Their crusade to make pizza from scratch goes without a hitch until the moment they get ready to bake it.

“What the fuck!” Lovett screams, peering into the bowl, and Jon approaches him with trepidation, wondering if the dough exploded, if maybe they _did_ add too much yeast and now the dough is sentient. Who knew what yeast got upto? Jon certainly didn’t.

“What? What?” Jon asks, and the bowl looks normal, and so does the dough, and it even looks like it’s doubled, even to Jon’s untrained eye.

Lovett turns to glare at him, his eyes comically round. Jon resists sniggering, barely.

“We put the fucking bowl on the stovetop when the oven’s on and now the bowl is hot and the dough is sort of cooked!” Lovett screams, and sure enough, when he lifts the ball of dough up, the bottom is crusty and hard.

“Oh my god,” Jon laughs, “okay, I did _not_ know that was a possibility.”

“Jon,” Lovett whines, and he elbows Jon slightly as he shifts the half-cooked ball of dough to their counter, “Jon, we are morons and we are never going to finish making this fucking pizza!”

“There, there,” Jon says unnecessarily, earning a well-deserved glare from Lovett. “It was our first time, we were bound to fuck something up, seeing as neither of us know how to do half of these anyway.”

“Exactly the attitude one would expect from the most idealistic puppy on the Obama team, wow, thanks Jon,” Lovett says sarcastically. “Should I just cut out the cooked out parts, and we roll it out?”

“Puppy?” Jon says amusedly. “And you know I’ve been dead inside since Trump, Lovett.”

Lovett gasps out loud. “You promised! No talk about _him_ today!”

Jon swears. “Fuck. Okay, I’ll do the laundry the next two times, then.”

“Three.” Lovett glares, and then he’s rolling out the dough, and there’s chunks of mildly brown spots all over.

“Two, and I’ll get out all the crusted bits if you read what the next steps are.” Jon goes to work, and it’s not fun work but it’s fun _enough_, with Lovett reading out the recipe and getting out the mozzarella and the San Marzano sauce they’d driven forty minutes last night to get because the whole of LA seems to be making pizza. Jon self-aware enough to understand that he’d tolerate drudgery without complaint (okay, with minimal complaining) if he could tolerate it with Lovett by his side.

“Jon, what’s a pizza stone?” Lovett asks, not glancing away from the recipe on his phone.

“Like I would know. Wait, isn’t that what they bake pizzas on?” Jon says absently, pulling out the last of the crusty pieces. The dough is noticeably smaller now, but there’s nothing he can do about that.

“Well, do we _have_ a stone?” Lovett asks impatiently.

Jon laughs. “Good one. And the dough is ready, I think.”

Lovett’s whiny again, and his face is flushed from the heat of their kitchen. Jon kind of really wants to lick him all over.

“Why didn’t you make me read the whole recipe before? What the fuck do we do now?”

Jon rolls his eyes at Lovett. “You said you don’t believe in recipes, and then you decided to climb into my lap when _I_ was reading it, so I’ll say this is all your fault.”

“Fake news,” Lovett says automatically, but Jon knows him, can see his cheeks get a shade pinker and his eyes darker.

“Okay, let’s read the recipe now? Before something else happens to this poor dough?” Jon proclaims, leaning over Lovett’s shoulder to read the recipe on his phone.

In the end, they figure out that they can bake it on the back of a sheet pan, and Jon only almost burns himself twice getting the pizza in and out. It could’ve used some more sauce, and discarding so much dough meant that it hardly qualifies as dinner for two, but stretched out on the couch with his legs intertwined with Lovett’s, the dogs cuddled together on their doggie bed, Jon’s never tasted anything better. Lovett’s talking animatedly about some television show he used to watch in college, his hands gesticulating, his curls wild around his face, and Jon’s never loved anyone more.

“So _then_ they discover that she’s actually an alien too because she’s _inside_ the shell, and they do this great pan-out-”

“Why haven’t I asked you to marry me yet?” Jon blurts out, and the words are out of his mouth before they fully pass through his brain.

Lovett freezes mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open, and it would be funny, it would be _hilarious_ if this was happening to someone else.

“Um,” Jon says inelegantly, but then Lovett recovers before him, because the corners of his mouth are quirking upwards.

“Are you actually proposing to me, Favreau?” he teases, poking at Jon’s thigh with his foot, “And here I thought I’d get at least a speech from Obama’s mind reader, the crafter of several heartwarming speeches, many that personally made _me_ tear up-”

“Okay-” Jon says, rubbing his neck in embarrassment, heat flooding his face.

“-and there’s no rings but I guess we can overcompensate with our wedding rings-”

“What,” Jon breathes out, because even in his haziness, he’s pretty sure that he heard the word _wedding_.

“-and honestly, maybe it will give us more money to spend on the honeymoon-”

“-Lovett!” Jon exclaims, and he reaches out and grabs both of Lovett’s hands in his. 

Lovett stops, and his snort of laughter melds into a soft smile as he looks at Jon. His eyes are bright, and Jon can detect the barest hint of a tremor in Lovett’s hands. There’s a bark, probably Pundit.

“I don’t know why you haven’t asked me to marry you yet, but maybe you should do something about that,” Lovett responds finally, sucking all the air out of the room. “And maybe I should too.”

Jon can’t say anything to that except a breathy, “Yeah, maybe I will,” before he’s pouncing on Lovett.

xxx

_December 31, 2017_

Jon _does_ prepare a speech, and he does buy a ring. 

Lovett buys a ring too.

They tell Tommy and Hanna first, and then their parents, and Jon goes to bed on New Years’ Eve with Lovett breathing next to him, thinking that nothing’s ever going to outdo this new year.

xxx

The first thing Lovett notices is that Leo and Pundit are both nowhere in sight.

“Fuck, what the fuck.” The panic’s setting in along with the headache taking root deep in his head. He shakes his head hoping to clear it. It only makes the pain worse. He’s never lost the dogs before.

“Leo! Pundit!” Lovett’s running down the street, and he knows if he turns left at the corner he’ll be about ten feet from home. Maybe the dogs had run off into the house. Maybe they’d spotted Jon somewhere.

“What the fuck happened,” Lovett murmurs as he runs, panic and confusion weighing his steps down along with the throbbing in his head. He’s never blacked out before, and he didn't even fall down, but everything tells him that _something_ happened to him for enough minutes that Leo and Pundit had clearly thought best to run away.

Lovett’s street is deserted when he makes the turn, which is common enough for LA before 11 am on weekends. There’s a woman he’s seen around a few times standing outside her house, her hand gripping the gate tightly. Lovett frowns, and he’d usually call out an “Are you okay?”, but he _needs_ to see if the dogs are okay first. He jogs faster, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

His phone’s dead. 

“Fuck,” Lovett sighs. But he is literally six feet from his gate, and Jon should be in there, and he’s going to roll his eyes at Lovett for forgetting to plug up his phone again, hopefully holding on to both of their dogs. 

The gate doesn’t budge when Lovett pushes it.

Lovett frowns. “Jon!” he shouts. “Did you lock this from the inside again? My phone’s dead!”

There’s no Jon opening the front door, however, sheepishly letting out a sing-songy apology for never remembering to close their gate right.

“Jo-oh, thank god, didn’t you hear-” Lovett stops short as the door opens fully.

It’s not Jon.

There’s an old man at the door, frowning in the direction of the gate like he’s not sure who’s there.

“Who’s that? Henry, is it canvassers again? Tell them we’re already registered!” a female voice comes from the depths of the house.

Lovett’s blood turns ice-cold the same time that his phone starts pinging incessantly with message notifications.

“Who’s there?” the old man calls out from the door, but Lovett’s eyes are rooted to his phone.

The call icon displays a _9999_ at its corner. 

And Lovett has 3648 messages.

“Son, are you okay?” The man’s voice is closer to the gate now.

If Lovett was asked to recall this moment later in time, he’d refer to the feeling as not dissimilar to Election night, 2016. It was numbness more than pain, confusion more than fear, though the pain and the fear would follow.

Lovett clicks through to his messages.

Jon’s name is at the top, which isn’t unusual, but there are 2879 messages from him, which is.  
Jon’s name is followed by Tommy, his mother, Hanna, and then Andy.

He clicks through to Jon’s texts.

The latest six texts show up. 

_  
December 31, 2018  
Jon: I wish you were here. I can’t stop thinking about last NYE Lovett. _

_December 31, 2018  
Jon: why aren’t you here? where are you? you should have taken me with you_

_January 1, 2019  
Jon: It’s a new year_

_January 1, 2019  
Jon: Tommy told me I need to stop doing this. I think he might be right. I think I might have to try._

_Today, 13: 43  
Jon: I shouldn’t be doing this right now but I am on a date and he is nice but he is all wrong and he is not you. I miss you_

_ Today, 13: 45_  
Jon: Am I ever going to stop missing you?  


Lovett doesn’t notice the old man calling out to him from the other side of the gate. His mind dimly registers the dates of Jon’s texts as clearly faulty, because his phone is fucked up, probably, because it is mid-morning of Saturday, January 5, 2018, and Lovett had been walking his dogs and then he is going to go back home and take his fiancé back to bed.

It is not 2019.

He pointedly doesn’t think about the content of Jon’s texts, and he doesn’t think about the strangers inside his house.

“Leslie! Oh my god! Les!” 

Lovett’s head turns automatically in the direction of the scream, the woman down the street that Lovett had passed earlier now held limply in the arms of an older woman sobbing into her shoulder.

Lovett dials Jon’s number.

xxxxxxxx

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it, and if you did, please let me know what you think! You'll notice I decided not to stick to the original 5-year premise of Avengers Endgame-so this is just a one year gap where our characters were "dusted".
> 
> Chapter 3 will be up soon-I hope you stick around!
> 
> My tumblr is tenisperfection, come say hi :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the final part! For everyone who stuck around, I hope you like the ending! And for ones who were maybe waiting until it's complete, I hope you enjoy the story!

The phone rings when Sean is in the middle of talking about the recent breakthroughs his research group has had in understanding geolocations of the lost phones of the dusted.

“Sorry,” Jon says apologetically, and then feels around for his phone in his pocket until he can hit reject.

“No worries, so I was saying, we then wondered if maybe we were going about this the wrong way, and if we should just start coding for the-”

The phone rings again.

Sean smiles at Jon as he swears, hitting reject again. Jon can feel the familiar itch starting somewhere in his navel and spreading to his fingertips; the sensation that has made him check his phone every five minutes for a text, or leap out of his seat every time his phone rings.

But he has been trying to get better, and answering his phone during a first date would probably not fit into that plan.

“So many spam calls these days,” Jon rambles awkwardly, hoping his phone stays silent for the duration it takes for the date to end. “I mean who even calls these days, right? I feel like my phone only ever rings when someone’s calling to tell me I am about to be arrested for tax fraud.”

That wasn’t true a year ago, Jon wants to add, but doesn’t. Lovett used to call him all the time, even though they spent all their time together. He used to call from the grocery store, from his escape room dates with Spencer, sometimes from the other room because Jon was _taking too long to get one thing, Favreau, come back here now_. When Lovett or Leave it was touring, Jon was pretty much walking around with his phone glued to his ear.

His phone never flashes Lovett’s name anymore.

“I wish Jeff Bezos would get a call like that,” Sean’s voice cuts into Jon’s thoughts, and Jon manages a surprisingly genuine laugh. That was good. Lovett would appreciate it.

“Holy fuck!” a voice behind them shouts. Jon whips his head around.

The bartender is clutching her phone tightly, her mouth hanging open, and like realizing all eyes in the bar are on her, she whispers, her voice quivering, “They’re back.”

Jon’s heart jumps the same time that his phone starts ringing again.

xxx

_January 15, 2017_

“We should buy a new couch,” Lovett announces, and he’s stretched out on his old couch that had taken six people to move into Jon’s house.

_Their_ house now, not just Jon’s. The thought still causes him to feel pleasantly shivery, even if for all intents and purposes, Lovett has been living with him since 2013.

“We already have two couches,” Jon reminds him. “We don’t have room for another one.”

“A nice yellow or blue couch, with a view of those french windows,” Lovett goes on, putting his feet on Jon’s lap. Jon thumbs his ankle, and it makes him feel tender just looking at the jut of the bone, makes him want to proclaim, _I’ll protect your ankle bone,_ and kiss it. 

Jon’s been quietly losing it the entire day.

“But I guess another couch will really cram this place up, so maybe when we buy a house next year or so we just update our furniture.”

Jon groans. “You really need to stop saying stuff like that if you don’t want to be fucked on this couch.”

Lovett laughs, and it’s a low, breathy sound in the darkening living room. “Did _I_ say I don’t want that? By all means, go ahead. Consider enthusiastic consent given for copulation on the couch to commence.”

“It’s so sexy when you say copulation,” Jon mocks, tugging Lovett towards him by his ankle. Lovett lets himself be dragged, and then climbs up onto Jon’s lap, his arms wrapping around Jon’s neck. “And when you use alliteration,” he adds.

“Not as sexy as you getting turned on by home ownership,” Lovett retaliates, a gleam in his eye. His face is sweaty, as is Jon’s; he’d forgotten how much moving entailed, even if it’s just across the road.

Jon’s dick proves Lovett’s point by twitching in his shorts at the idea. Lovett howls in laughter.

“Oh my god, I am _so_ using this in an ad read,” he proclaims happily, and then latches on to Jon’s neck, sucking a mark over his collarbone. Jon lets his head drop to the back of the couch with a sigh, his hands gripping Lovett’s ass.

“Don’t you dare,” Jon manages, trying to recall their conversation thread. “I’ll tell Tommy.”

Lovett bites down sharply, and Jon hips thrust up involuntarily.

“We fell off of this couch the last time we attempted this,” Jon pants out, but he’s so on board with whatever Lovett’s doing to his neck. It’s been a few sleepless nights since they decided to take Keeping it 1600 a step further, and they’ve been coming home and collapsing on top of the nearest soft surface more than attempting to celebrate their upcoming relationship milestone.

“The floor has a rug on it,” Lovett breathes against his mouth, and then they’re kissing, Lovett grinding down on Jon’s lap. Jon palms Lovett’s ass, and then slowly slips his hands inside Lovett’s shorts and boxers, feeling soft, bare skin against his fingertips. Lovett’s hole is warm to the touch when Jon’s thumb grazes it, and he gets a whine in return.

“Do you still want to talk about home ownership?” Jon whispers, biting Lovett’s lush bottom lip, making Lovett undulate on his lap even more. 

“I mean, if you want to,” Lovett says, licking into Jon’s mouth for a moment before drawing back, peering into Jon’s face with dark, bright eyes. He’s so pretty like this, all his attention focused razor-sharp on Jon, and Jon only. 

“Mortgages. Furniture shopping. Target runs. Renting UHauls. Painting walls. Wallpaper-” Lovett goes on, craning his neck to allow Jon to kiss it, but Jon’s laughing too much to manage more than exhaled chuckles against Lovett’s skin.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he inquires, brushing a finger deliberately against Lovett’s hole again, and then when he jumps, lets it rest there.

“Expanding my dirty talk repertoire? You can’t accuse me of not being open to my partner’s weird kinks,” Lovett says, and his voice has definitely taken on a rough edge that falls on Jon’s ears and goes straight to his cock.

“I don’t have a real estate kink, I am just kinky for _you_,” Jon murmurs nonsensically, and desperately wishes they had lube within arm’s reach.

“Great sentence, I’m sending it to Hallmark.” Lovett’s twitching in his arms, squirming and pressing down on Jon’s finger like he wants it inside him already.

“Shut up about my kinks if you want me to carry you into our bedroom,” Jon says, and his dick traitorously jumps against Lovett’s ass again, causing Lovett to snigger. Jon’s never known before Lovett that laughter could be a fun and even integral part of sex, but he doesn’t think he can live without it in his life anymore.

“Don’t drop me; I’m precious, one-of-a-kind cargo,” Lovett kisses Jon again, and then again. He loves kissing Jon, their extended group of friends and even a few patrons of their favorite restaurants know how much he loves it. Jon’s not complaining one bit, even when their friends regularly tell them to get a room.

Jon stands up with Lovett in his arms, arms and legs tightly wound around Jon. “I won’t let you go,” Jon promises, punctuating it with a kiss to Lovett’s forehead.

xxx

Jon abandons his car in a McDonald's parking lot and runs the rest of the way to his old neighbourhood.

He doesn’t think as he runs, ignores the occasional screams and sobs heard around corners, doesn’t acknowledge how everything seems more crowded that it has been for a year. 

He doesn’t think about how it looks like _before_.

He doesn’t think about the phone call, or about the tendrils of fear crawling up to his heart that whisper that it wasn’t Lovett on the phone, it can’t be, it’s just another invasive spam call gone too far.

Jon’s lungs are burning as he turns the corner on to the street he had lived on for four years. And there, barely ten feet from Jon, crouched low on his feet and staring at their old house, is Lovett.

Jon keeps running even when everything in him screeches at him to stop, that this _has_ to be a trap, because Jon’s spent a whole year looking around corners for Lovett and never found him.

Lovett turns around just as Jon comes to a halt in front of him.

Jon doesn’t dare to believe it, but the man in front of him is the same one who left their house one Saturday morning last January, and not come back with Leo and Pundit nearly an hour later. It’s _got_ to be; Lovett’s wearing his pink shorts and one of his twenty black t-shirts, and his hair is the same length it had been a year ago, curling around his ears and at the stage where it’s ready for a trim. Jon used to love it.

He still does.

“What is going on?” Lovett demands, and he’s not making any move towards Jon, who is slowly crumbling to pieces in front of Lovett, at the sound of hearing his favorite voice in the world after a year.

“Lovett,” Jon breathes out, and it comes out all weird and floaty, like Jon’s not actually here, like he’s watching this happen to someone else.

“Something weird happened, didn’t it?” Lovett continues, and he’s suddenly leaning in, curling a hand around Jon’s neck. It’s an old thing Lovett does to calm Jon down when he’s leaking anxiety and confusion everywhere, when his world is turning on its head too fast for Jon to hold on. 

It still does the trick.

Jon rests his forehead against Lovett’s, and the tears come before he can stop it, brimming at the corners of his eyes. 

“Hey,” Lovett murmurs, and his hand squeezes Jon’s neck lightly. “Jon, I’m scared, what happened?”

_Lovett doesn’t know_, Jon’s broken brain supplies, and then his heart floods with something like relief. _At least he was spared this._

“I-let’s go home,” Jon says then, drawing back to look at Lovett, his vision still hazy through tears. He wipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his t-shirt, watching Lovett watch him.

At his words however, Lovett turns to glance at their old house.

For Lovett, it had been _their_ house until half an hour ago; Jon hasn’t lived here in nine months.

“We-I moved,” Jon mutters, the same time as Lovett asks, “Why is the date wrong?”

They stare at each other in silence. Jon’s never been quiet around Lovett, who in turn fills any room and Jon’s mind with chatter, equal parts mundane and solemn in a sometimes bewildering but always enjoyable combination.

“I-can we go somewhere and talk?” Jon begs, and his voice comes out quivering. He hasn’t spent too much time on this street since, since then, and even with Lovett in front of him here, he can’t shake the feeling that the longer they stand here, the more chances there are that Lovett’s going to disappear slowly in front of Jon’s eyes, turn to dust again.

“No, tell me why the date is wrong, and why we don’t live here anymore. Jon, _please_. What the fuck is happening? Is this a joke?” Lovett looks around then, fire in his eyes, as if daring Travis or someone else to jump out yelling “Gotcha!” from behind the cacti that Pundit always likes to sniff at.

“Lovett,” Jon swallows whatever the fuck feeling that is making his chest feel like it’s about to burst open, and touches his hand to Lovett’s arm, hand still gripping Jon’s neck. “Lovett, something bad happened, pretty bad, with the Avengers and Thanos and-” he takes a deep breath, “-half the people on Earth disappeared without a trace for a whole year.”

_You sound like you’re reporting the fucking news_, Jon chastises himself, but lets the _You disappeared without a trace for a whole year_ remain unsaid.

Lovett’s as still as stone; he might as well have been frozen into place. Jon quickly puts his forehead back against Lovett’s and slowly draws him close, his body and mind screaming in recognition as their torsos touch.

“But it’s okay now,” Jon says, trying desperately to make it sound convincing even if he doesn’t believe it. “It’s okay now, I promise. I’m here. You’re here.”

They stand huddled together in the late afternoon sun as Jon feels Lovett slowly begin to shake.

xxx

_February 12, 2018_

“We could try another person?” a voice says halfheartedly, and before Jon could talk through the bile rising up to his throat, Tommy interjects.

“It’s named after him, you think bringing in another person as a Lovett substitute will work? We just cancel, plain and simple.” Tommy’s voice is sharp, and he looks around the table as if daring anyone to suggest otherwise.

Travis jumps in before Jon can, and puts a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “We’re not substituting,” he says, and his eyes flicker towards Jon. “No offence to any of the podcasters here, but I’m not writing jokes if anyone else does the show. I’m not writing _any_ jokes anymore.”

There’s a murmur of assent heard around the room. Jon wants to rest his head on the table, or at the very least, dig the palm of his hands deep into his eyes to stop it hurting. He wonders how people would react if he started banging his head repeatedly against the table until he couldn’t remember why he started doing it in the first place.

He vigorously shoves the thought away.

“We need a person for the newsletter,” Tanya’s voice cuts in. “I am scouring twitter, but we’ll need a substitute until we get someone.”

Tanya glances around, and Jon registers that someone steps up for the job, but he’s already retreated back into his head, where his brain is playing a flashing powerpoint of images seemingly intent on making Jon want to screech in pain.

Priyanka with Pundit on her lap, trying to work on the newsletter and laughing at the camera Elijah points at her. Lovett handing off Pundit to Priyanka whenever he needs to go to a meeting or record, because Pundit adores her and Lovett adores her. Lovett’s look of delight when Hanna handed him Lucca the puppy for the first time. Sarah moving over from disapproval and giving in to laughter during ad reads in the office when Lovett and Tommy succeed in derailing Jon’s feeble attempts at sticking to the copy. 

The way Lovett looked at Jon the first time Jon said the sentence, “Welcome to Pod Save America.”

“Jon,” Tanya’s voice cuts through his thoughts, and Jon jerks up to see the table looking at him, but with shifty eyes like they’re trying hard to not make it obvious.

“Sorry, zoned off,” he mutters, shame slowly creeping up his neck, along with the near constant thought that he was failing the company he’d helped start.

“We were just discussing Alyssa joining Dan for the Thursday pod, and you and I doing Mondays,” Tommy answers from next to him, and then Jon feels Tommy’s hand rest lightly on Jon’s knee as if to say, _I’m here._

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Jon says automatically, even though it did not, because nothing sounded good anymore. Across the table, Tanya’s eyes are on him, her gaze indiscernible.

Jon lingers in the conference room that Lovett had named Collusion as everyone filters out after the meeting, and approaches Tanya as she stands up.

“Thanks for..doing everything,” Jon says awkwardly, and he wants to thank her properly, tell her how much it matters that she’s still doing this, ask her _how_ she’s doing this after everything.

Tanya shrugs, and the last question floating around Jon’s head bursts out of him.

“How are you still, how are you doing this now?” Jon asks, and if Tanya is surprised, she conceals it well. “I..I can’t stop thinking about-, I feel like I’m useless and like I should just quit-”

“Jon,” Tanya interrupts, and she puts a hand on Jon’s tightly crossed arms, “what other choice do we have?”

Jon’s tears, when they come, are shed into Tanya’s shoulder. When he makes his way back to his office, Jon’s own t-shirt is wet with tears, but his heart is lighter than it has been since January. Jon hopes Tanya feels comforted in some way too as he reciprocates her watery smile when she walks past him to talk to Tommy.

xxx

Lovett looks lost as he munches on his sandwich, legs tucked under him on the couch, scrolling through his phone.

“The Avengers,” he says suddenly. “ABC.”

Jon reaches for the remote and turns the television on.

Pepper Pott’s face flashes to life when he switches channels. “-pleased to say that this looks like a threat that’s passed, and as many of you are already aware, people who had been lost have now returned, according to anecdotes and estimates from governments all over the world. I’d like to request those listening at home to please call the numbers on the screen to self-report if you’re one of the returns. This will also enable authorities to reach out with information that will hopefully ensure a smooth reintegration. The Stark Foundation is also offering funds for those of you who need shelter-”

“I’d better do that,” Lovett mumbles, his fingers typing up the numbers on his phone. With a quick glance at Jon, he stands up and leaves the room for the kitchen.

“-Tony is in stable condition, as is Ms. Romanoff, and they’re both waiting to join in on the festivities that I hear Thor is throwing the entire city of New York, and maybe Earth itself.” There’s laughter from the hosts, followed by applause, and Jon flips the channel.

“-the Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby is speaking shortly to Anderson Cooper about his return-”

Jon flips the channel again and settles on an episode of Friends, which should hopefully be free of current events. His eyes stare at Rachel and Chandler eating cheesecake off of the floor without absorbing anything, his brain soaking in just one thought over and over again.

_Lovett’s here._

He comes back into the room then, and with a moment’s hesitation clearly written across his face, bypasses the couch and comes to a stop in front of the armchair Jon’s currently on.

It’s second nature for Jon to open up his arms, and for Lovett to crawl onto his lap, legs swinging on either side of Jon’s and face buried in his chest. It’s not usual for the action to move Jon to tears.

“Shh,” Lovett says, and his voice is all gruff, “it’s okay. I’m here. I’m back.”

It only makes Jon sob harder into Lovett’s curls.

“They said I have to book an appointment to get checked out, see if there are any signatures for interdimensional travel or some shit on me.” Lovett murmurs into Jon’s neck. “Weird to think I might have traveled dimensions and not know.” 

It calms Jon down like it has everytime Lovett launches into chatter when he senses Jon needs distraction. And Lovett _always_ knows, because he’s some kind of a psychic perhaps, or simply that he knows Jon inside and out, in every way it’s possible to know a person.

Jon had thought he’d never have this again.

The thought leads to Jon shed some more tears into Lovett’s hair, which surely needs to be washed now. Lovett puts a hand on the back of Jon’s neck and talks about Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark, about what Crooked could do to help people who have returned, and then when Jon starts quieting down, finishes with what the best cheesecake in Long Island was.

Jon thinks, _How are you still holding me together, after all this?_, but does not voice it. He knows the pain will come, so he tightens his grip on Lovett and desperately hopes that they’re ready for it when it eventually does.

xxx

_March 3, 2018_

Jon starts texting Lovett the afternoon he officially moves out of their house. 

Tommy, because he is an angel, and the best friend Jon’s ever had, is at the new apartment with the last of Jon’s furniture. Jon wonders how he’d ever repay him and Hanna for almost completely moving Jon out of the house to the apartment he’s rented near their place.

But Jon couldn’t avoid the house or the street forever.

_So my lease is up in January,” Lovett says over pizza, and Jon doesn’t even need a second before he finishes, “Move in with me. You practically live here anyway. No need to pay rent for an empty house.”_

_Lovett’s smile usually brightens the whole room, but the one on his face now could power the whole planet._

_“I know you only want me so you can split the rent,” Lovett pouts, but lifts his face so Jon can kiss him._

_“Yeah,” Jon murmurs against his lips, “that’s all I want, definitely. A roommate.”  
_

Jon stares around at the empty living room, at the spot where the couch had been, where Lovett had spent half the weekend playing video games or cuddling the dogs. Or the other couch by the far wall that seldom got used except when Lovett pushes Jon on it and climbs over him, saying he’s always wanted a sex couch. 

_”You know, one couch is good, the other one might have questionable stains, but it’s still a win-win.”_

_”You’re the worst.”_

His phone is in his hands and open to Lovett’s contact picture as it almost always is these days. It’s a photo of Lovett on their bed, laughing wildly as Leo and Pundit try to lick up his face. His curls are all over the pillow like a halo, and Jon’s never not smiled looking at it.

Absently, Jon thumbs open their text conversation. The last text mocks him, so he quickly clicks on the text box.

_January 6, 2018, 11:47  
Jon: Lovett. Please.  
_  
Jon slowly types, his heart beating faster with every word. 

_March 3, 2018, 13:21  
Jon: I’m moving out of the house today.  
_  
He hits send, his throat tickling traitorously, and goes out of the house with the duffel bag of scattered things he’d picked up during his final pass. 

He doesn’t look back, but instead slowly walks across the street to the house Lovett had once lived in. The house that Lovett, eyes dark and hands intentional, had pulled Jon into after they’d gone on a proper first date, dressed up and nervous like they’ve never had dinner together before. 

Jon’s typing again before his mind gets back on track.

_  
March 3, 2018, 13:25  
Jon: Do you remember our first date? The way our waiter looked at us because we were arguing about the Senate seat in Illinois, like we were definitely going to go home in separate cars.  
_

Jon smiles, ignores the stinging in his eyes, and presses send again.

xxx

Hanna refuses to leave Lovett’s side all night, and Jon can relate.

“Do you want more wine?” Tommy asks, and he’s looking at Lovett like he’s the best thing he’s ever set eyes on, and Jon can relate to this too.

“I’m good,” Lovett mumbles, and while he’d usually be pleased to be cuddled by his people and have things brought to him, Jon detects a stronger flash of the annoyance he’s been spotting on Lovett’s face all night.

“Should we call it a night?” Jon slowly asks, “you guys can crash in the spare bedroom, it’s already one thirty.”

Hanna probably identifies Lovett stiffening in her arms to be what it is before Jon does.

“We’ll just go home, it’s all right, you guys should spend time with the dogs,” Hanna says, and the unsaid _”and with each other”_ hangs in the air. Tommy nods.

Hanna kisses Lovett on the cheek as she steps out the door, and Tommy jumps forward to do the same, pressing his lips to Lovett’s forehead. Lovett smiles.

“Dear diary,” he quips, and Tommy startles, but laughs shakily and kisses Lovett’s forehead again before quickly following Hanna. They wave at them from the gate, and Jon scoops Leo and Pundit up before shutting the door.

Lovett’s face is dark when Jon turns back to him. Pundit and Leo jump out of his arms and run to Lovett, who goes down on his knees to let them lick his face.

“Are you okay?” Jon asks, and he winces at the question like he used to internally when everyone asked him that for a whole year. 

Lovett looks up from the floor, and his face is colored with anger.

“No I’m not,” he says shortly, standing up. “I’m going to bed.”

Jon nods slowly, something like dread creeping into his heart, diluting the pool of happiness he’d been wading in all day. “Second door on the right. Bathroom’s attached.” 

Lovett opens his mouth and then closes it again, taking a deep breath.

“I think I’m going to sleep in the spare bedroom.” 

The words seem to stretch between them, taking forever to reach Jon’s ears. 

“Y-yeah, sure, it’s the room next to mine, I mean, next to the bedroom,” Jon rambles, and his mouth seems to be ignoring everything his brain is screaming, which are all variations of _I need you with me, please._

Lovett nods slowly, and he’s fidgeting with the hem of his t-shirt, a common nervous tick. Jon hates that Lovett’s like this in front of him perhaps more than the idea of being apart from him again.

“Can I have one of the dogs?” Lovett asks, and Jon quickly says, “You can take both of them, it’s fine.”

Lovett nods again, and then lifts both the dogs up, one under each arm, and disappears down the hallway towards the spare bedroom. Jon stands in the living room, staring after Lovett long after he hears the door shut with a definite thud.

Jon’s woken up an hour into his restless tumbling around the bed by the scratch of paws at the door, and then the door opening and closing in quick succession.

“Hi baby,” Jon rumbles as Pundit jumps up on the bed eagerly. He draws her tiny, warm body close and settles on his side. His phone pings.

_  
Today, 3:02  
Lovett: You should have Pundit. Leo is sleeping on top of me right now and says he will see you tomorrow.  
_

Jon falls into a restless sleep staring at the first message from Lovett in a year, and wakes up the next morning with the smile he went to sleep with.

xxx

_  
April 12, 2018, 10:02  
Jon: HBO, Lovett!_

_April 12, 2018, 10:03  
Jon: I don’t think we’re going to do it_

__

Jon shoves his phone aside before Tommy notices. 

“I think you should do this,” Travis says, and Tanya nods besides him.

“You think?” Tommy asks, and he sounds surprised. “I don’t know. We’ll just sound boring without Lovett, and this is actually tv.”

“You’ll be fine, and think of the reach.” Tanya adds. “Everything’s fucked up now, and the more places people get reliable resources, the better.”

“I don’t know,” Jon says, and he’s thinking more than just about doing a live show without Lovett next to him, berating the crowd into laughter and then delivering an impassioned rant two seconds later. “Are people going to care about watching a random podcast’s live show during a time like this? We still don’t know what’s happening with a third of the contests this November.”

“But you _do_ know about the others,” Tanya sighs. “Listen, I know this is weird, but if there’s any chance at all we can help people make up their mind in time for the midterms, I think we should do it.”

_She’s right_, Jon thinks, even as his heart breaks a little. 

Travis jumps in. “Also, I don’t want to face Lovett when he eventually hears that you passed on a platform like HBO.”

_He’s right too_, Jon thinks, feeling a pang of gratitude for Travis, who has been clamoring on Twitter and to anyone who’d listen to him in person about all the research the Pentagon and Stark were doing into reverse the dusting, as they’ve taken to calling it. Jon doesn’t follow these too closely, and tries to delegate it to the Thursday pod as much as he can. 

It seems foolish to hope.

“Okay,” Tommy says, and at Jon’s answering nod, they pencil in HBO for late October.

_  
April 12, 2018, 11:13  
Jon: We’re doing HBO. The midterms are such a mess with everything and we should help_

_April 12, 2018, 11:15  
Jon: I am sorry  
April 12, 2018, 11:16  
Jon: Though Travis said you’d want us to do it and he’s right._

_April 12, 2018, 11:17  
Jon: He’s right, right Lovett?_

_April 12, 2018, 11:17  
Jon: can you please answer me for once? Are you even getting these?  
_

When Jon starts demanding answers from no one, it’s his cue for flipping his phone face down on the table and turning back to his computer angrily. _At least you have a system now,_ his brain mocks in his therapist’s voice. Jon ignores it.

_-straight shoo-teeer, Lovett, or leave it-_

The music thunders through the silent office, causing Jon to jump up in his seat. Tommy fumbles with his phone.

“Shit, shit, sorry, I thought my airpods were connected.” The music cuts off abruptly.

Tommy glances at Jon apprehensively. “Sorry Jon.”

Jon shrugs, his attention already back on his outline, trying to cheat his thundering heart into calmness. “You don’t have to apologize so much, it happens.”

“Hanna and I keep listening to him, we can’t stop,” Tommy says suddenly, and Jon turns his attention back to him. Tommy is looking sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah?” Jon prods.

“We listen to all the episodes that are there, and then we start over,” Tommy smiles. “He’s so fucking funny.”

Jon smiles back. “He is. Remember when Hanna said she needs a break from his voice in her ear?”

Tommy’s smile turns smaller, more wistful. Jon returns to his outline again.

He sits in his car in the parking lot that evening, Pundit in his lap and Leo in the passenger seat. His phone takes a moment to connect with the car’s audio.

_”Hi everybody.”_ Lovett’s voice floods the car suddenly, and Leo and Pundit start barking.  
“Shh,” Jon quitens them, straining to hear over his dogs and his own drumming heartbeat.

_“I feel like I need more than that?”_ Lovett’s voice is followed by scattered applause and a few hoots over the car speaker, and Jon has to clutch Pundit tighter to him to calm her down.

_”A lot more than that!”_ Jon shuts his eyes tightly as loud clapping follows. He presses a kiss to Pundit’s fur and straps her in next to Leo and turns the volume all the way down before pulling out of the parking lot.

He’ll do it with headphones on when he gets to the apartment; he’d forgotten it wasn’t just him in the family who hasn’t heard Lovett’s voice in months. It wasn’t just him missing Lovett sleeping next to him everyday, his breathing calm, regulating Jon’s own erratic pulse when they’re pressed together.

“Sorry Pundo, sorry Leo,” Jon mutters when they’re at a stoplight, reaching out to scratch their ears. “Don’t you want to listen to dad? Maybe later? We’ll do it slower? Do you need more time?”

The light turns green, and Jon switches to drive, thinking it’ll be really foolish to tell his dogs, _”It’ll almost be like having him here with us again._

xxx

Sunday is strange due to how normal it seemingly is.

Jon wakes up and Lovett’s already fiddling with the coffeemaker, pushing a mug of it in Jon’s direction silently as he goes to make eggs. They walk the dogs together, and both of them don’t say anything when Leo and Pundit cling to Lovett all day. They get Chinese for lunch and eat the leftovers for dinner. 

But their conversation throughout the day is stilted and awkward in a way Jon only remembers it being once, back when he and Tommy had been on the phone with Lovett during the campaign, when Jon hadn’t even _known_ who Lovett was. It seems unfathomable now, almost as much as having Lovett frown at the Netflix menu from next to him once again.

“There’s a new Stranger things? Is it good?” Lovett inquires as the trailer plays.

“I didn’t watch it. Supernatural things have sort of stopped being my thing,” Jon says, reaching out to scratch Leo’s belly for lack of something better to do.

Lovett doesn’t respond to that.

It’s been like this all day, their conversation starting out about something casual but ending up with Jon putting his foot in his mouth and referencing the past year obliquely, and then Lovett falling silent. Rinse and repeat.

“What’s this?” Lovett asks, and Jon glances away from Leo to see his own face on the screen. His heart sinks.

“We did a show with HBO, for the midterms. Well, we did four.” Jon says, and Lovett’s mouth falls open.

“_Wow._” And then he falls silent again, and that’s it, Jon’s had enough.

“You’re not going to say anything else?” His voice comes out pleading, a hint of desperation in it. _Talk to me,_ he doesn’t say, and neither does he scream out, “_please, it’s been a year._

The thing is, Jon knew it was coming, the weirdness and the emotions Lovett is clearly going through, but he’d selfishly hoped it wouldn’t be this soon, that he’d have more time to get acclimatized to having Lovett in his arms.

Jon expects Lovett’s reply to be as sharp as he gets when he’s pissed off about being left out, but it comes out small, weary, defeated. It scares Jon.

“What do you want me to say, Jon?” 

“We didn’t-we had to do it because of the midterms-” Jon starts, and Lovett doesn’t even let him get through it.

“Of course you had to do it, I can’t even imagine why you would say no to fucking HBO for anything, I’m just sad and angry I missed it and so many other things.” Lovett responds, his eyes boring into Jon’s. 

“Me too,” Jon mumbles, and he wants to say, _“But you’re here now.”_ But Lovett still lost a whole year. He’s not getting it back, and neither is Jon.

“I was so fucking angry and sad last year. I had to-I spoke to someone about it.” Jon continues. Lovett’s eyes somehow feel like they’re holding him in place, tethered to the couch.

“She told me to write a journal, because somehow they all do, but I sent you all those texts instead, which she said was only delaying my moving on-” Jon cuts himself off, not sure how to go on.

“I saw that you sent me texts,” is all Lovett says. Jon blinks.

“You read-” and Lovett shakes his head.

“I _saw_ that you sent me close to four thousand texts, I haven’t read them yet.”

“Right,” Jon says awkwardly. They’re back at it again, to their periods of silence, like they were on a badly matched first date and not Jon and Lovett, who could not stop murmuring to each other even during Oval Office meetings.

_It’s never going to be normal again,_ the traitorous voice in his head chimes, and Jon ignores it, watching as Lovett stands up.

“I’m gonna go lie down,” he says, and Jon nods and doesn’t ask which room he’s going into. Lovett picks up Pundit this time, and leaves the room after a long glance at Jon and a kiss on the head for Leo.

Sleep doesn’t come immediately that night, and Leo seems as restless as Jon, jumping on and off the bed randomly until Jon pulls him to the bed and puts an arm around him. He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he’s aware of is the door opening in the middle of the night for the second time in as many days, followed by a pattering of feet and then the bed dipping. He sits up quickly.

“Pundo-” Jon mumbles, his throat scratchy, and a second later, the glass of water that’s on his bedside is pressed into his hand.

“Lovett,” Jon breathes, his eyes adjusting to the dark. He quickly swallows some water before putting the glass away and goes to turn the lamp on, but Lovett’s hand clutching his arm stops him.

“Don’t,” he says, and his voice is shaky, like it gets when he’s- Jon reaches a hand to Lovett’s face, and it comes away wet.

“Lovett,” he says again, panic kicking him awake, “what’s wrong?”

“I read your texts,” Lovett sniffles, and then he’s flinging himself into Jon’s chest, sobs wracking his body.

“Lovett, _baby_,” Jon says, and even in the state he is in, he marvels at how natural the pet name still sounds. He hugs Lovett to his chest tightly and kisses his head, and for a while, the only sounds are Lovett crying and Jon making the soothing noises he usually uses on Leo and Pundit when they’re agitated.

“I’m sorry,” Lovett hiccups, “I didn’t know-it must have been awful, I don’t know what I’d do if you disappeared-”

Jon’s own eyes are misting over, and he blinks quickly to clear his vision. “It was the worst thing that could have happened. God, Lovett, I thought you were never coming back, they said I had to have a-”

He can’t finish the sentence, but if Lovett clutching his waist tighter is any clue, he got what Jon didn’t say.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’ve only been-I’ve been so pissed off the whole fucking day, but I didn’t think-you must have-” He’s not making much sense, his sentences breaking up with sobs, but Jon hears the words “Tommy”, “company”, “July 4th”. He wishes desperately for the right words to come.

“Lovett,” he starts, taking a deep breath to calm himself down. “I know it sucks, and it was fucking terrible, and most days I wished I didn’t exist, but you know getting you back is the best thing that’s happened to me, right? I didn’t-I only want this. And I want us to be okay. And I know it’ll take us a while, but we can do it. We can do anything, right?”

Lovett quiets down and doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Jon’s afraid he’s fucked it up, but then Lovett’s muffled voice sounds.

“Yeah. We can. But Jon, I’m so fucking _angry_ I missed a whole year of my life, a whole year with you, and we were going to get married-” He starts shaking in Jon’s arms again, and Jon holds him tighter, wishing he could pull Lovett into his body, wishing they were one so they’d never be without the other again.

“So am I,” Jon says, and memories come flooding back at that; of him screaming into his pillow, into Fran’s shoulder. “We can be angry together. And we can be okay together too. Just, _please_ give me a chance to make this okay.”

Lovett withdraws his head from Jon’s chest at that, and his eyes glint eerily in the streetlight flooding in through the window. Slowly, Lovett leans forward until his lips are on Jon’s.

It’s like life has been poured into Jon for the first time in over a year, and he kisses back with all the intensity and desperation he’s felt, along with all the love that had no place to go the past year. Lovett’s clutching at his forearm, panting, and Jon licks into his mouth clumsily, profoundly glad that relearning Lovett is like riding a bicycle after a hiatus. He’s forgotten nothing.

“I love you,” Lovett says as he draws back, their foreheads resting together. Jon’s hands are buried in his curls, _like they’re supposed to be_, he thinks. “I love you, and of course we can work this out.”

“I love you too,” Jon responds, and he kisses Lovett again, one hand slipping beneath Lovett’s t-shirt. 

Jon goes back to bed that night with Lovett in his arms, Leo and Pundit snoozing draped across their legs, and it’s the best he’s slept in a year.

xxx

_June 2, 2018, 4:57  
Jon: I miss you_

_ June 2, 2018, 13:20  
Jon: Hanna baked me a cake and I cried all over it_

_ June 2, 2018, 13:43  
Jon: Hanna and Tommy cried too_

_ June 2, 2018, 13:44  
Jon: We all miss you so fucking much_

_ July 4, 2018, 9:48  
Jon: I miss your stupid flag shorts so I’m wearing them. It looks terrible on me_

_ July 4, 2018, 13:43  
Jon: fcuck om so sorryy_

_ July 4, 2018, 13:45  
Jon: sorri_

_ July 4, 2018, 13:45  
Jon: SORRY, fuck. The ring_

_ July 4, 2018, 13:49  
Jon: i didnt mean to thrw it to the pool i was drnk nd ngry_

_ July 4, 2018, 13:50  
Jon: angry_

_ July 4, 2018, 13:51  
Jon: tommy got in for me dont worry_

_ July 4, 2018, 13:52  
Jon: he got it_

_ July 4, 2018, 14:00  
Jon: he says i shud put it in box so i dont lose it_

_ July 4, 2018, 14:01  
Jon: but u wont be with me then itll be like youre really gone_

_ July 4, 2018, 14:02  
Jon: tommys yellin at me to stop textin you_

_ July 4, 2018, 14:05  
Jon: pls come back_

_July 4, 2018, 23:17  
Jon: I put the ring in a box along with yours. _

_July 4, 2018, 23:19  
Jon: It’s here for when you get back_

_July 4, 2018, 23:19  
Jon: Forget I said that, I’m becoming Travis. And my therapist will be mad._

_July 5, 2018, 2:47  
Jon: Please come back.  
_

xxx

The Improv sends them an email that the show sold out within a minute of bookings opening.

Jon holds Lovett’s mildly shaking hand backstage on the day of the show, and it gives him déjà vu to the time Lovett did his first show right here.

“You’ll be fine,” he repeats. “They love you, and they’ve missed you.”

“I’m scared I’m going to cry,” Lovett confesses, pushing up his glasses with his free hand. 

“It’s okay if you do,” Jon assures him, and then Travis pokes his head in, gesturing to Lovett with a grin.

Jon runs offstage to the first strings of the theme music, and the crowd starts screaming. Lovett walks onstage with his drink and index cards just as Jon reaches their table, throwing a wink at Priyanka and Tanya as he passes them.

“Hi everyone,” Lovett quips, and then everyone’s on their feet, and the applause goes on for three whole minutes, and Jon’s already tearing up by the end of the first.

“That’s very sweet, that’s very sweet, thank you!” Lovett says, gesturing for the audience to settle down, and Fran squeezes Jon’s hand across the table, her eyes wet. 

“So, 2018 went by _so_ fast,” Lovett says, and they’re all laughing again. “I thought I’ll start with a segment we’re introducing called “What a year, where did it go?” 

Jon settles back in his seat, grinning, his eyes only on Lovett, like it’s always been.

After the show, Jon leaves the Lovetts chatting with Hanna and Tommy as he runs backstage, spying Lovett making a beeline for his dressing room, probably to put away his index cards. Lovett’s fussing with the straps of his backpack when Jon enters the room.

“So you took a while chatting with your fans,” Jon says, and Lovett jumps and turns around. 

Jon’s favorite thing in the world is watching Lovett’s face when he spots Jon. He doesn’t really know how to describe it, but Lovett’s face brightens, his edges softening, his eyes crinkling.  
It tugs at Jon’s navel like a hook, drawing him closer to Lovett.

“Well, I had a lot of them today,” Lovett says coyly as Jon envelopes his hips with his arms.

“Hmm, you know I’m your biggest one, right?” Jon inquires, furrowing his brows playfully.

“Your face when you see me on stage kind of gives that away, Favreau.” Lovett says happily, “you’re really not cool about it.”

“I’m okay with that,” Jon says, and then he’s digging around in his pocket for the box. “I’m hoping you’ll be okay doing this here too.”

And then Jon’s down on one knee, and Lovett’s eyebrows are shooting skywards.

“Um, you didn’t lose your memories, right? We already did this? A year ago?” And then Lovett actually knocks at Jon’s temple with two fingers like he’s checking for Jon’s memories.

Jon shrugs. “We didn’t really get to live the engaged life, and besides, you didn’t have your ring on when you- and I put mine away too because-”

“You threw it into the pool on July fourth because you were mad, yeah, I know,” Lovett says, but his voice is as soft as his face when he looks down at Jon. “Go on, then.”

Jon startles at that, and he hasn’t really prepared a speech, but Lovett will make fun of him forever if he fucked this up. He can already hear it: _The world’s best speechwriter, my fiancé, everyone._

“Lovett,” he breathes, “I-I made a promise to you a year ago now when I did this, that I’ll always be by your side. I wasn’t able to do that,” Jon closes his eyes as his voice trembles at the last word. But then there’s a hand on his shoulder, and Lovett’s crouching down too, kneeling across Jon and intertwining their hands together around the box. Jon smiles at Lovett when he gets the nod to continue.

“But I know how it is to live without you, and I don’t ever want to fucking do that again. I know we have things to talk about, and we’ll have days when we’re angry and sad about everything, but I want to do it with you and no one else. So Lovett,” Jon breathes, and he’s extricating his hands from Lovett’s and opens the box. Two golden rings sit inside on the plum colored velvet.

“Lovett, I am so in love with you, will you marry me?” Lovett’s half crying and nodding as he leans forward to kiss Jon, and both their faces are wet when Jon slips the smaller ring onto Lovett’s finger.

“You got it resized,” Lovett exclaims, staring at his hand almost in wonder.

Jon nods. “I did it when you were at Tommy and Hanna’s on Wednesday.”

Lovett kisses him again and then takes the other ring out of the box still in Jon’s hand. “You’re not the only one who can make great off-the-cuff speeches in this household,” he says haughtily, and then corrects, “well, in this dressing room.”

“By all means,” Jon smiles, and it’s so hard not to touch Lovett everywhere at once, and Jon wonders briefly if Lovett’s weirded out by Jon’s excessive clinginess over the past two weeks. But then he thinks of Lovett’s intensity when he touches Jon in their bed every night, his eyes almost manic as he bites at Jon’s collarbone.

“Jon, you said everything, and I know I didn’t have to live without you the past year, and I don’t want to try that at all, and I just want to say,” Lovett cuts off his rambling and breathes deeply, looking into Jon’s eyes, “I just want to say that the apartment sucks and I think we should buy a house and honestly, I’m not saying that just because you have a kink for property, but anyway, you already asked so I’ll just answer here; yes, I’ll marry you, and I fucking love you too.” 

No one but Lovett has ever managed to make Jon cry and laugh helplessly within the same sentence, and Jon loves him _so_ much he wants to make a podcast about it. Write several, one-hour speeches. Create a tweet thread with twelve thousand parts.

“You’re so weird,” Jon says instead, and then Lovett’s slipping the ring onto Jon’s finger, and it looks like it never left or met the bottom of the Vietors’ pool.

“Hey, _you’re_ the one with the kink for buildings. Is it just the ones that are phallic shaped, or is it all of them?” Lovett asks, and Jon laughs and laughs before he pulls Lovett into a kiss. 

xxx

_January 13, 2019_

Jon’s hands are shaking as he pulls his ringing phone out of his pocket. _Please_, he thinks desperately, _please be back._

**Jon Lovett**, his screen flashes, the first time in three hundred and seventy three days.

“Hello,” Jon says, feeling like he might faint any second.

“Jon,” the voice says, and it’s _him_, it’s Lovett, and Jon scrunches his eyes closed as his insides melt. “Jon, I’m here outside the house, where are you?” He sounds impatient, like Jon’s late by ten minutes to pick him up.

Jon’s standing up and is out of the door in five seconds, Sean making no move to stop him. “I’m coming Lovett, I’ll be there, just stay.”

“Please,” he adds, his voice trembling.

The reply comes instantaneously. 

“I’m not going anywhere.”

xxxxx

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, I hope you liked this fic! Let me know what you think, I love hearing from you. <3 I'm tenisperfection on tumblr (and yes, I was really bothered by two characters dying on Avengers Endgame, why do you ask?)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you stick around for parts two and three! 
> 
> I'd love to know what you think; any kudos or comments are much appreciated! I am tenisperfection on tumblr.


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